Harry Nkumbula

Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula (* 1916 Maala ( Namwala district), † October 8, 1983 in Lusaka ) was a politician in Zambia . He was one of the political leaders of the Bantu in his country's struggle for independence from British colonial power.

Life

Harry Nkumbula, a Tonga by origin , was one of three children and the only son. His family ran a cattle ranch. He went to school on a Methodist mission near his birthplace and passed Standard VI at the Kafue Training Institute in 1934 . After that he was a teacher in Namwala District for some time .

In 1938 Harry Nkumbula joined the teaching service of the Northern Rhodesian government. He worked in Kitwe and in Mufulira in the Copperbelt . During the Second World War, like many other trained Bantu, he came into contact with African nationalist ideas and became politically active accordingly. He became secretary of the Mufulira charity and co-founder of the African Society of Kitwe .

Harry Nkumbula then attended the teacher training center in Chalimbana and in 1946 went to Makerere University College in Uganda with the support of Stewart Gore-Brown , a British settler and politician . From there he moved to the Institute of Education at the University of London and graduated with a diploma. There he met other African nationalists who were working together politically after the Pan-Africa Congress in Manchester, England in 1945. With Hastings Kamuzu Banda , who later became President of Malawi , he drafted a document that was of fundamental importance for the opposition to a white-dominated Central African Federation from Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Nkumbula began studying economics at the London School of Economics , but failed the exam and returned to Northern Rhodesia in 1950.

Political activity

Because of his militant, eloquent and uncompromising opposition to the Federation, Harry Nkumbula was elected chairman of the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress in 1951. In 1953, Kenneth Kaunda became its general secretary. When Nkumbula tried to organize a national strike, disguised as a “National Day of Prayer”, the population did not react because the chairman of the African Miners' Union, Lawrence Katilungu , was against it. In October 1953 the white settlers founded the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland against the will of the black Africans. In early 1954, Nkumbula and Kaunda organized a boycott of butcher shops in Lusaka, which were mostly owned by whites.

However, they found that it was very difficult to mobilize people against the Federation. In early 1955, Nkumbula and Kaunda were imprisoned for two months for distributing prohibited literature. Through this experience Nkumbula became more willing to compromise, while Kaunda became more radical. The two soon fell apart. In October 1958, Kaunda founded the Zambian African National Congress , which was banned in March 1959. In June 1959, Kaunda was sentenced to nine months in prison. During this time the United National Independence Party was formed, and Kaunda became chairman as soon as he was released. This party was soon better organized and more radical than the NRANC Nkumbulas, which is why UNIP quickly rose to become the dominant force in the country's struggle for independence.

During the constitutional talks in London in 1960 and 1961, Nkumbula only played a subordinate role. Another disadvantage turned out to be a prison sentence from April 1961 to January 1962 for "causing a death by dangerous driving", because of which he disappeared from the political scene. In the October 1962 elections, Nkumbula made the mistake of recognizing the Moïse Tschombé regime in Katanga . He was also ill-advised when he made a secret election pact with the all-white United Federal Party . Then he found himself in the role of a tip on the scales when he had to decide between UNIP and UFP with the seven seats of the NRANC. Nkumbula became Minister for African Education , which indicates an agreement between UNIP and NRANC. In the elections to the legislative council in January 1964, UNIP won 55 seats, and the NRANC - ethnically based on tribal groups in the south - ten. With that, Nkumbula became opposition leader.

Independence

In the days of the Federation, Nkumbula's political base had increasingly merged into the southern province . Although the NRANC also won a few seats in the Western Province in the 1968 election in Zambia , Nkumbula Kaunda had little to oppose politically, even later when he created the dictatorship. Nkumbula signed the so-called Choma Declaration on June 27, 1973 and faced allegations of having been bought for it. His political end finally came when he supported Simon Kapwepwe's candidacy for the presidential nomination in 1978 in UNIP. Both were outmaneuvered by Kaunda and finally disappeared from the political scene.

Nkumbula's son Balwin also became a politician and was widely traded as Kaunda's successor. However, he had a fatal accident.

literature

• Hugh Macmillan: Nkumbula, Harry Mwaanga (1917? –1983) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press , London 2004
• David C. Mulford: Zambia. the politics of independence, 1957-1964 . Oxford University Press, London, 1967
• Goodwin Bwalya Mwangilwa: Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula. a biography of the old lion of Zambia . Multimedia Publications, Lusaka 1982
• Fergus Macpherson: Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. The times and the man . Oxford University Press, Nairobi, 1974
• John J. Grotpeter, Brian V. Siegel, James R. Pletcher: Historical dictionary of Zambia . 2nd ed., Scarecrow Press, Lanham (MD), 1998

Individual evidence

1. ^ New York Times : Harry Nkumbula Dies; Led African Congress . October 10, 1983 New York Times report, online at www.nytimes.com